Dr Holly T. Dublin - New Chair of the Species Survival Commission

10 December 2004 | News story

Holly Dublin - nueva presidenta de la CSEIUCN, Gland, Switzerland 10 Dec 2004. Dr Holly T. Dublin’s association with the Species Survival Commission began over 30 years ago when she became a member of her first Specialist Group. Since that time she has contributed to numerous SSC Specialist Groups, task forces and initiatives. In 1992 she became the Chair of the African Elephant SG, one of the Commission’s most productive and acclaimed groups. In 1994, Holly joined the SSC Executive Committee and has been a dynamic participant ever since.

Holly moves with ease between the day-to-day realities and concerns of conservation practitioners and the world of international policy, its financiers and decision-makers. A skilled writer and orator, with a long and dedicated history with IUCN and SSC, she will be a committed and effective Chair.

Although Holly has lived in East Africa most of her life, she received her MSc. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Washington in 1980 and her PhD. in Zoology from the University of British Columbia in 1985. In the course of her career, she has been awarded: WWF’s International Conservation Merit Award; the Chicago Zoo’s President’s Medal for Conservation Excellence; Officer of the Golden Ark; the Charles A. Lindbergh Grant and is a two-time Fulbright Scholar. A life-long expatriate, she remains a U.S. citizen.

In 2002, Holly completed twenty-years with WWF. Professionally, she “evolved” from her origins as a nascent Graduate Fellow working in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, to become the Project Ecologist for the Masai Mara Ecological Monitoring Programme, the Scientific Officer for Eastern Africa and finally, for many years, as a Senior Conservation Adviser for WWF’s Africa and Madagascar Programme. Since then, she has served as a Senior Conservation Adviser for IUCN’s Eastern Africa Regional Office in Nairobi, while conducting independent evaluations and programmatic planning exercises for the Global Environment Facility, the International Finance Corporation, UNEP, WWF International and numerous other NGOs.

Holly has many other associations within IUCN and its Commissions as a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas, the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy and as an active contributor to the Commission on Ecosystem Management, particularly with regard to the conceptualization and operationalization of the Ecosystem Approach to the conservation of biodiversity. On the regional and national level, she has worked with IUCN’s national and sub-regional offices in Africa and Asia. She has been an active player in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) and is also experienced in the deliberations of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on Migratory Species.

Her priorities for the Commission over the next four years are:

* restructure the Commission and its Secretariat support system to facilitate the integration of the work of SSC’s members and Specialist Groups with the outputs of the SSC Strategic Plan (2001–2010) and IUCN’s Key Results Areas (2005–2008);
* re-appoint the Specialist Group Chairs on the basis of criteria developed by the Consultative Group on Commissions, recommended to the IUCN Governance Task Force and later adopted by Council;
* continue to respond in tangible ways to the recommendations outlined in SSC’s “2001 Study on Voluntarism” and the “2004 External Review of IUCN Commissions”;
* assist in securing support for the implementation of the Species Information Service to enable it to reach its full potential;
* forge stronger and more synergistic partnerships and joint programmes of work with our “sister” Commissions, the Secretariat and with relevant institutions and individuals outside IUCN; and
* investigate the merit and feasibility of SSC hosting an international forum on species conservation.